Strawpeople "Worldservice" 1992

...A fascination with sound and its manipulation was evident early, with Casserly telling RNZ in 2018, “I was sampling things before we had a sampler. I remember in the late 70s my Mum had a tape of the Pope and I’d have Public Image in one channel of the tape deck and the Pope in the other.”..

...But the Strawpeople story starts in the cramped studios of Auckland’s bFM in the late 80s.
It was a place where Casserly, who struggled with his studies, found a bunch of likeminded geeks and outsiders. One of these was Mark Tierney who ran its tiny 8-track studio.
“I was lucky in that I joined just as the station switched from AM to FM and they upgraded the suite from the 4-track in a closet situation to 8-track, and with a real honest-to-god mix console,” remembers Tierney.
“We were still using spring reverb though which is hilarious to think about in 2018. So I spent most of 1984-88 living there – I often used to sleep in it – desperately trying to make interesting noises happen. Paul brought a sort of focus to the enterprise.”
“The main thing in those days,” say Casserly, “was that we just loved hanging out in the studio and making stuff and, both being DJs at bFM, we had brilliant access to all sorts of music.
“I think the specialist shows like Audible World gave us a sort of degree course in music.
“We were lucky to be doing things with low tech that, thanks to Mark’s skills, sounded pretty cutting edge. He was obsessed with all that, especially the high-end Fairlight stuff that was worth hundreds of thousands, he studied that shit intensely and he number-eight wired it at bFM’s studio, making two non-musicians sound like we were on to something. Kids have better tech on their phones today!”
Tierney remembers the first collaborations were proto songs of ‘Something Else Is Missing’ (the above-mentioned track featuring the Pope) and another using BBC coverage about Chilean leader Salvador Allende.
For a while the pair worked at a restaurant together and would go to the studio afterwards to make music, getting home at 5am.
Tierney: “We were both poor, frustrated musicians – Paul was a decent drummer and had been in a ska band, I was a terrible keyboard player who used to make weird noises with a Korg MS-10 – that were interested in the same politics and popular culture. The recording studio at bFM was heaven for me.” - audioculture

trax:
01 Have a Little Faith 02 World Service 03 The Slide 04 Tough Culture 5 Help Me Michael 06 Trick with a Knife 07 ReSurface 08 Beautiful Skin 09 Wings of Desire 0 Love Explodes 11 Cruelty 12 Dreamchild
…served by Gaius…